Pictures of our visit to Spain

Since our return to Salt Lake about 2 weeks ago, many people have questioned whether April and I were ever actually in Spain. (J/K) To rectify this we are posting a few of the digital pics that we just got back from the developer! We'll add more pictures of our brief visit to Europe in a future post when I can find them on April's computer.

This is a view of the hotel pool taken from the balcony/patio of our room. Yes the room where we were confined for over a week!

Off in the distance, about 2 kilometers beyond the trees is a beach. But who needs a beach on the Meditteranean Sea when you have a lovely pool like this one?

Here is a photo of April standing on the little bridge at the pool in the early evening.

I tried to get her to pose here for me during the day in her swimming suit.. but she sternly refused!

Our room is the lower row of lights.. second light from the right.

This is a sculpture near the beach in the town of Cambrils. It was taken from a little restaurant across the street where we enjoyed a slice of Spainish pizza and a coke on our first afternoon in Spain.

April eating pizza. Mmmm yummy!

And in all fairness.. here's one of me eating some pizza.

Where's Jerry?

I know most of you are wondering if we dropped off the edge of the earth. In a way.. yes we did. Let me bring you up to date:

We arrived in Spain on a Tuesday and were told that we wouldn't need to go to the office until Thursday. Our assistant, Fedrico, drove us to our hotel in Cambrils and we checked in and unloaded our bags. Then he drove us down into the village and we walked around through the shoppes and restaurants. We had a pizza at a little place overlooking the beach. It was great!

Then it was back to the hotel and we managed to stay awake until around midnight. We wanted to get our bodies used to the time in Spain and avoid as much jet-lag as possible.

We slept until around 10 a.m. the next morning and Fedrico picked us up for a tour of the project we would be working on. We also spent some time discussing how to organize our offices and made lists of what equipment we would need.. how many desks, chairs, etc. and where everything should go. Then we went shopping for some things that we needed for ourselves. We had a late lunch at McDonalds, and went back to the hotel.

That evening, Mel and Robert had a meeting with the client to finalize some details of the project. On the following morning we got a call telling us that Mel and Mitchel (another associate on the team) would be meeting with us for lunch the next day. It was at lunch that Mel told us that the client was backing out of the contract to hold an auction. We were stunned. Mel told April and I that we should just wait it out for a couple days while everyone determined what we needed to do. The following day we learned that another meeting with the client was scheduled for the following Tuesday afternoon.

We tried to enjoy the weekend but because the project was cancelled we didn't have Fedrico at our disposal with his car. Our Hotel was about 2 kilometers from the beach and about 4 k from the village. It was a little too far for us to walk there and back so we stayed in our hotel room and watched Spainish TV and did sudoko puzzles. At some point during the weekend I went down to the pool and got a desent sunburn on my chest and one side of my legs. It's not difficult to burn in only a few minutes when your body hasn't seen sunlight for 20 years!

We eventually learned that the client did indeed want to cancel the project and the hotel informed us that he would not be paying for our stay there beyond the 31st. Robert put us up in a small apartment of his in the nearby town of Calafel and we spent two uncomfortable nights there. The only bright point was that we were now only a block from the beach.

I will interject here on the beaches.. they are some of the finest beaches in the world. The area is known as the Gold Coast because of the golden color to the sand. It really is gorgeous! However, one must be cautious. The Mediterranean is known for having nude beaches and family beaches. It's easy to avoid the nude beaches but the family beaches can be treacherous too.. as it's not uncommon to find topless sunbathers on the family beaches. We avoided this situation by visiting the beach in the early morning hours when they weren't crowded. We had the beach mostly to ourselves and with others who wanted to avoid the crowds.


On Saturday the 2nd we returned to the airport and boarded a plane back to the USA. We arrived in SLC late on Saturday evening. Bob picked us up and we are currently staying at his home. Sunday was spent getting through the jetlag ritual and today I started looking for work. We are at the moment homeless and unemployed.

Now you know where Jerry is!

That's our story and we're sticking to it!

Journey to Spain

We're sorry for the delay in posting.. and the lack of emails but we have only had very limited internet access since our arrival.

Well, here we are in Spain... finally. For months now we have been anticipating this move while multiple delays kept us at home in Texas. Our journey here was uneventful except for lengthy airport delays and an Atlantic hurricane.

We arrived at the SLC airport in plenty of time to check our bags and sit patiently waiting at the gate. The plane left on time and arrived a little early in Atlanta. But arriving early isn't always a good thing because our arrival gate was still occupied by a departing plane. So we sat on the runway waiting for it to taxi away. When it finally did we only had about 20 to 25 minutes before our flight to Barcelona was scheduled to leave.

Because our seats were near the rear of the plane we were amoung the last to leave. Our challenge was to hurry to the train get to the international gates as quickly as possible. As would be our luck our departing gate was the furthest one down the concourse. All the other passengers had boarded the plane by the time we arrived.. or at least we thought so.

After boarding, the plane waited at the gate for a few more stragglers to arrive from connecting flights. The pilot finally started to taxi out onto the runway. We didn't get far however before the captain stopped the plane and announced that we needed to return to the gate for maintainance to check out a leak that had been found on the plane. It turned out to be a leak in one of the restrooms and they could repair it quickly, however an additional problem was discovered in the operation of some passenger video monitors and that would make the delay longer.

Eventually the repairs were made and the captain again had us underway. By this time we were only an hour and a half behind schedule. As we taxied out we could see lightning in the night sky and a light rain was falling. The captain then announced that the winds had shifted and we would be departing from a different direction which required us to turn around and taxi to the other end of the airport. As we moved in that direction, an additional announcement come over the intercom informing us that the airport had stopped all flights from landing and departing. We would be sitting on the runway for awhile waiting for conditions to change.

Eventually we were informed that we had been cleared for takeoff and we were only fifth in line. We held our breath until we were in the air and on our way. In all our flight had been delayed for 3 hours and 20 minutes.

After the flight attentants had served dinner and cleared the resulting debris, April took a sleeping pill and drifted off to sleep. Uncompfortable as it was she did manage to sleep. I played games and watched movies on the video monitor, dozed a bit but never fell asleep. The flight was rough with a lot of turbulance due to a weakening Atlantic hurricane but we arrived safely.

In Barcelona, we gathered our bags and met up with our contacts here. By the end of the day we were in a hotel room in Cambrils, Spain; exhausted but excited for the adventures awaiting us here.